The Wales Family

Hooray! We finally made it to Utah. We drove almost 800 miles Friday to make it to Layton by 7:30 in the evening. I think we did a great job. Here is what most of our drive consisted of…

Nothing but corn for miles through Iowa and Nebraska, and then sagebrush through Wyoming. Gotta love driving I-80.

I was amazed at how well our girls did during the drive. 5 days in the car and they never complained, and only seemed to get bored just a couple of times and then were easily entertained again. They were great. And the whole 5 days we only had to make 2 bathroom stops for Jaycee. She was great! I think we were definitely blessed with these 2 in the car. I don’t know how I would have made it if the kids were not handling the drive well.

Saturday we unloaded into our storage unit and returned the big yellow beast. We were so glad to get rid of that thing.

We already miss all of our friends in the South, along with the trees and the good chocolate milk. We wanted to bring some back with us, but the store was sold out when we tried to get some the night before we left. We ended up bringing one pathetic 20-ounce jug of chocolate milk across the country with us, because we wanted to enjoy it one last time!

All in all we had a great trip and we are happy to be back in Utah. We are enjoying being with family and are getting settled in to our temporary home.

Well, as far as distance goes, we didn’t make much progress today - in fact we traveled a bit in the opposite direction. But today was definitely our favorite day of our trip. We traveled across the river from Iowa to Illinois and visited Carthage and Nauvoo. What an amazing experience to be in these places with so much history and inspiration.
Carthage jail was our favorite place of the day. I can’t even describe the feeling there. I was really glad we got to go. It is worth the trip if you ever can make it.
In the visitor’s center grounds Jaycee started playing with a squirrel. It was cute because it just kept playing with her and they ran all over the grounds together. She was giggling so loud. It was fun.
In Nauvoo the family posed with an authentic horse-drawn wagon…
We took a wagon ride around the old town…

We stopped in the family fun center, which was really neat. we learned about candle-making, barrel-making, pottery, bread, and more. And Jaycee was able to help make a rope, just like in old-time Nauvoo.

Rylee loved playing with the pioneer dolls.
We got to see how they made wagons, wagon wheels, horseshoes, and all other sorts of things in the blacksmith / wainwright shop.

Craig really liked this one…
And of course you can’t go to Nauvoo without seeing the beautiful and marvelous temple. It is breathtaking.
And we are staying the night in the old Zion Mercantile.

What a great day! It’s too bad we aren’t staying to see more. you really could spend days here. But we plan on seeing a few more things in the morning before the 18 hour drive to Utah.

We stopped in St. Louis for a while to visit the arch and the museum of western expansion. It was quite fun. Jaycee and Rylee did not like the tram to the top of the arch however. They thought it was scarey, but they loved looking out the windows at the top.
Here we are in the “tram”. For those of you who of done this before you know these little pods you ride in are very small. The five of us felt like we were sitting on top of each other in there.
You can see the girls are much happier at the top. It’s fun to see out below. We even saw our big yellow truck down below!
And we were able to time things just right so that when we left the arch it was 5:00 and we got to drive thru rush hour traffic out of St. Louis. Hooray!
The stop in St. Louis was fun, but most of the drive today was quite un-eventful. Nothing much to see. Of course, it’s much better than what we will see in Nebraska!

I’m already missing South Carolina, but not missing the crazy drivers, honking, and road rage. Today in Kentucky I had to stop at the WalMart to buy some medicine for Rylee and some lady sort of cut me off in the parking lot. It wasn’t very bad and I didn’t really think much of it, but when I got to the stop sign she was turning right, and i left, so we were next to eachother, and she rolled down her window and apologized over and over to me. I definitely didn’t feel like I was in South Carolina any more.

And we are one day closer to Utah…

Well, our great journey across the country began today. We left Columbia and are heading for Utah. My dad flew in Saturday night to help us on the drive, which we much appreciate. We of course had to get a large order of wings before our trip back. I am really going to miss those wings - you can’t get anything like that in Utah.

Here is what our house looked like Friday night, before we loaded the truck on Saturday.

Now it is completely empty!

We got off to a pretty good start on our travel. Although we originally planned to leave Tuesday, we got the house ready to go and left Monday instead. We weren’t quite ready first thing in the morning, but we were ready to go by 11:30. But then we had a flat tire on the trailer (go figure!) and we had to wait anther 2 hours for the Penske guy to come fix it. Even with not leaving until almost 2:00 we still made it to the border of Tennessee and Kentucky.

Here are the girls enjoying the ride (notice the “big yellow truck” following behind)…

And here is a sight you won’t see in Utah. In South Carolina the freeways are bordered by trees and you really can’t see anything else. I am going to miss the green SOO much. I’m not looking forward to the brown scenery.
Before we left we had to say goodbye to our dear friends in Columbia. We have met so many wonderful people here that we are going to miss so much.

Here we are saying goodbye to our friends the Woods family. They are such a great family, we really think the world of them. We have never had such great friends where our entire family gets along with their entire family. We love them and they will truly be missed.

I know Jaycee is going to have a hard time without Marissa nearby…

And here are all of the kids, being their crazy selves.

And Craig and I with Heather and Jason…

We will miss you all so much!

And for all of you who have been asking, we are planning on leaving South Carolina on Tuesday, the 23rd and arriving in Utah on Friday night (the 26th). My dad will be coming to help us with the moving truck(s) (we might need 2), and we will be stopping for a 1/2 day in Nauvoo. Hopefully all will go well with the trip, but right now I am more worried about getting it all ready for it!

On a more positive note, the kids are having LOTS of fun with all of the boxes around the house.

Okay, remember a few months ago when I posted this picture of Rylee sleeping…

Well, this is how she went to sleep last night:

Seriously, how uncomfortable does that look?

That’s right. For those of you who have not heard, we have decided to move our family back to Utah. I have such mixed feelings about it, because I love it here in Columbia and this feels like where I would love to settle for the rest of my life, but at the same time I am excited to be closer to family. And since our entire family wouldn’t move here, I guess this is our only option.

Jaycee has been SO excited to start her dance classes. She could not wait to go on her first day. We put on her new leotard and she just kept saying “look at me, I’m a ballerina”. She had the biggest smile on her face.

Her first day went really well. Her teacher is so nice and Jaycee really liked the class. She was excited to come out of the dance room to show me what she had learned.
Rylee enjoyed dancing around with her too. She thought it was great, and Jaycee was so cute to try to teach Rylee all of her moves. Jaycee’s class was at noon, but she had to wear her ballerina outfit for the rest of the day, even to her friend Levi’s house that evening (his mom watched the girls for us that night). She wanted him to see her outfit and her dancing.
I think she will really enjoy her classes and she makes an adorable ballerina!

This past weekend was a blast! I love long weekends, and this one was great with lots of time spent with family and friends. We kicked off the weekend by going out to dinner (just our small family) to one of our favorites, Chili’s. We hung out the rest of the night together, shopping, and playing. It was great.

Then early Saturday morning we headed off to the beach with our good friends the Shumways. We went to our favorite, Folly Beach.
Craig, Vern, and the kids built a spectacular sand castle…

The kids loved playing in the little “kiddie pool” , as I like to call it.
Of course we enjoyed our sandy picnic. Especially Rylee digging into the chips with her sandy hands… yummy!
And everyone enjoyed the Body board. Especially Levi, we couldn’t rip that thing from his hands (sorry,no pics of that until Kathy sends them my way).

Vern had a great time exploring the sea creatures. we were all sitting in the “Kiddie pool” when he noticed we were sitting amongst lots of living creatures, like sea cucumbers that pooped on his hand. yuck.

Then we enjoyed the rest of our weekend relaxing on Sunday and going to the Chapin Labor Day Festival Parade on Monday with our friends, the Woods and the Meyers.
We sat right where the floats come out and got loads of candy and goodies. It was great.

I hope all of you had as good a weekend as we did!!!